Why Justin Trudeau’s Novelty Socks Are Worth a Closer Look

Socks are having a moment. It all started on the runway—at Prada, Gucci, and Vetements, specifically—and before we knew it, socks were rivaling It bags as 2017’s most highly coveted, hard-to-find luxury items. You still can’t get your hands on Vetements’s striped tube socks from Spring, despite their $95 price tag (i.e. what you’d pay for 10 Hanes three-packs), and even Gucci’s $370 bow-trimmed socks are in low supply.

We have a feeling that the novelty sock obsession has something to do with fashion’s weird, off-kilter mood of late—not to mention the fact that socks are among the lower-priced “entry” items for young fashion fans. Five or 10 years ago, kids saved their pennies for practical designer wallets and scarves—but what would be the point of that now? Even Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau knows the power of a weird, offbeat sock: He’s recently worn red maple leaf socks (an homage to Canada’s flag, of course), NATO-themed socks (for a NATO meeting, naturally), and Star Wars socks (for a meeting that happened to fall on International Star Wars Day). They’re socks with a message, even if that message is just that he has a quirky side and loves George Lucas films.

Last weekend, Trudeau’s socks made a bigger statement: He marched in Toronto’s Gay Pride Parade wearing a rainbow-striped pair with “Eid Mubarak” along with the star and crescent. Why? The parade happened to line up with the end of Ramadan—so in a pair of socks, he managed to show his support for both the LGBTQ and Muslim communities. Socks are Trudeau’s way of using clothes to express his views, similar to how Democratic women in Congress wore white to protest President Trump’s stances on women’s rights. Trudeau might just inspire other men in business formal offices to get a little experimental with their socks (or ties, or pocket squares). While you wait to see which socks he wears next, we found 15 statement-making pairs he’d no doubt approve of. Shop them all in the slideshow above.

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